Note: Much of that presented in this post was culled from Reverse Pitch Day presentation found here on YouTube. It's a long recording and, if nothing else, I recommend listening to the 14 minute section starting at 6:11 and ending at 20:11. What Type of Relationships Can Entrepreneurs Have with a Corporate Enterprise?Engaging with a large corporate enterprise is very different from the engagement typical of a business-to-consumer (B2C) business relationship. To help entrepreneurs better understand some of the benefits and challenges of engaging with a corporate enterprise, the first presenter at the Cambia Grove Reverse Pitch Day event shared some insight into some considerations for building relationships with corporate enterprises.Questions to Help Define Your Relationship 1. What type of relationship do you actually truly want to pursue and build with a large enterprise? There are multiple ways an entrepreneur can view a corporate enterprise: Customer? Advisor? Investor? Commercialization partner? Design partner? All of the these?2. One specific avenue is to view them as your potential long-term customer. Is the enterprise one of many potential organizations you want to build a relationship? Or is it one that you want to really build your business off of foundationally? Or is there some sort of other relationship you’re trying to build?3. Do you view a specific senior executive within the enterprise as potentially an advisor or potentially even a leader of your company?There's a way to build an enterprise partnership beyond simply viewing them as just a customer; where you as the entrepreneur have the opportunity to build an alliance and build domain expertise knowledge from having that alliance.4. Do you view this enterprise partner potentially as a commercialization partner, realizing the fact that large enterprise often times have very key strategic relationships with other large enterprises. If you're able to align with this large enterprise, they could provide you with business development support to get you into other enterprises, if the incentives are aligned.5. Do you view them as a specific investor? Many enterprises consider the opportunity to invest in a startup as a way to build mutual value. Many enterprises have their own Corporate VC arm.Perhaps you want a combination of the corporate enterprise being both a customer and investor, for them to have a little bit of skin in the game, for them to provide you with business development opportunities, for them to basically provide you the connections that you need as a start-up to grow.6. Do you view them as sort of your design partner? Are you still at a very early stage in your company where you're looking to sort of MVP your product, have the opportunity to test it out with real customers and see if it actually can really build traction?7. Or do you really view it as everything: do you want to just go in and just do the full gamut?Developing Relationships with Corporate EnterprisesIn order for an entrepreneur to build an official and effective relationship with a corporate enterprise, the entrepreneur needs to understand his or her 'origin’ and have a clear plan on how to approach the corporate enterprise.Whether the ‘entrepreneurial startup’ was created and incubated from within the corporate enterprise (i.e. Intrapreneur) or is an unrelated, external party (entrepreneur) influences the approach and boundaries for developing a business relationship. In a previous post on the RPD event I shared some information about considerations for ‘Internal Intrapreneurs’ vs. External Entrepreneurs

Note: The RPD presentation included several slides that are shown in the recording but are hard to read. Accordingly they're not included in this post.For instance,Are you seeking a potential enterprise client as an external customer investor or are you looking to leverage their resources in order to scale and grow from within? There's multiple ways you can think about it and there's not one specific track that you have to take but you really have to choose a pathway and then pursue that pathway. It's much more effective and much quicker and you'll save you a lot of time and effort versus trying to feel it out before you begin that relationship.Are you seeking a revenue regenerating opportunity or are you seeking a funding opportunity. The opportunity you are seeking is going to affect the type of conversations that you're going to have. It's going to affect the type of stakeholder internal champion that you're going to have. If you're not a 100% sure it could become much more difficult or you can find yourself spinning in the business development cycle.More Coming SoonIn my next and final post I’ll share more information from the Reverse Pitch Day event for entrepreneurs considering developing a formal business relationship with large corporate enterprises. I’ll try to hunt down the presentation materials and see if I can include some of the graphics. In the meantime, consider following me on Twitter where I share information about healthcare data, technology and services – among other topics.

Saturday, October 29, 2016

This past week I had the opportunity to listen in on a “Reverse Pitch Day” presentation held at the Cambia Grove, a unique ‘accelerator-incubator-innovation-startup space-support hub’ that's a subsidiary of Cambia Health Solutions, a non-profit healthcare enterprise located in the Pacific Northwest; and a four-state (OR, WA, ID, & UT) BCBS Association licensee.

At the start of the event (available here on YouTube) and at various points throughout the presentation, the host, presenters and audience/participants shared information about dealing with corporate venture capital (CVC) organizations and the benefits and challenges associated in dealing with CVC's. This post presents some information about CVC's and summarizes some of the information shared during the Reverse Pitch Day event. A future post will share more details about what was shared at the event. Of course you can review the 80 minute long YouTube Video too.

Corporate Venture Capital in Healthcare

It seems like every major health plan, health system and healthcare provider enterprise has some sort of corporate venture capital group working to identify, nurture and leverage the quickly evolving technologies and the entrepreneur’s using them in new and innovative ways to address healthcare opportunities, challenges and issues.

While corporate venture capital organizations have been around since the 1960’s, corporate VC units have really seemed to take off in the healthcare space over the last 5 or 6 years. Whether the result of past healthcare mandates like ICD-10 and Meaningful Use - or Mega Regulations like the ACA and MACRA; or perhaps due to a shift in the historically risk-averse healthcare corporate culture, there's definitely a willingness of large corporate enterprises to bet their capital and invest their human capital on developing new products and services that can be used to both advance their own business AND earn a potential investment gain.

How Does Corporate Venture Capital Differ from 'Traditional' Venture Capital?

Corporate venture capital has distinct differences from independent venture capital (IVC) that entrepreneur startups should be aware of before deciding which fund-raising route to take up with. While not a complete list, and perhaps subject to some opinion, the following have been identified as major differences between CVC’s and IVC’s:

1. CVC’s usually have greater industry knowledge due to the business focus and technological fit between their parent firms and the entrepreneurial firms in which they invest.

2. CVC's often have greater tolerance for failure due to longer investment horizons they'll tolerate.

3. CVC's pursue both the strategic and financial objectives of their parent companies, while IVCs’ sole goal is primarily to achieve high financial returns as soon as possible.

“CVCs are usually more open to experimentation and to occasional failures in their portfolio firms compared to IVCs. The presence of a corporate parent may provide CVCs with a unique knowledge of the industry and the technology used by their portfolio firms, which is absent in IVCs. This superior industry and technology expertise of CVCs may enhance their ability to better use the soft information they receive about their portfolio firms’ R&D activities, thus allowing them to better assess and nurture these new ventures’ technologies and products.”

Connecting w/ Corporate Venture Capital

1. The incentives of Corporate VC's are typically aligned to the needs of the sponsoring corporate entity and those incentives may not be aligned with the entrepreneurs. It’s very important for entrepreneurs to understand the CVC’s intention (need) BEFORE deciding to make their pitch, invest their time and spend their resources establishing a formal relationship with the CVC.

2. Large enterprises have key strategic relationships with many other large enterprises that can be of tremendous value to an innovative startup.

Internal Intrapreneurs vs. External Entrepreneurs

Many CVC's invest in and nurture both internal entrepreneurial activities and products being developed by external organizations. The following was shared during the Reverse Pitch Day event:

1. External organizations dealing with Corporate VC will have a greater sense of autonomy than those internal to the organization and will essentially be treated like a vendor. Corporations have 100’s of vendors vying for the attention of the corporate enterprise and the entrepreneur has to be able to stand out from the other vendors.

2. Startups pitching Corporate VC’s have a real opportunity to build a commercialization alliance. But they must be aware that they'll also likely be tied into and subject to the corporate restrictions and concomitant bureaucracy/slow decision making process present is nearly all large enterprises. Essentially they're going to be subject to more restrictions as to what you can and can’t do - as opposed to as (somewhat) more hands off relationship when partnering with a more traditional VC outfit.

3. If seeking revenue or funding from the internal perspective, it’s helpful to keep the perspective of leveraging corporate business development resources. (More on this in a following post)

What’s Next

In the next post I'll provide more details and information, benefits, challenges - and some tips for startups - that were shared during the Reverse Pitch Day event at the Cambia Grove. For more information on healthcare data, technology and services, consider following me on Twitter.

Monday, October 17, 2016

As someone who's been working in healthcare, mainly for health plans, payers and risk-bearing providers for over 20 years, I'm always interested in what others have to say about health plans and those who assume payment risk.

T4: What are some ways payers can use digital to reinvent their business models?

The need for healthcare payers to provide succinct, easy-to-understand information about benefits and payment made for member benefits dominated the conversation on Topic #4. Here are all the responses I was able to glean on this topic from those participating in the #HealthITChicks chat:

Yes! Neither doctor nor
patient know how much the insurance will pay and how much will be
"denied" and why

So thanks to all those who regularly share their knowledge, expertise and opinions about healthcare and healthcare IT - via tweetchats like #HealthITChicks and via Twitter and other social media channels. You can follow me on Twitter where I regularly share information about healthcare data, technology and services.

Jessica posed questions about his experience with engaging consumers, what providers think and need from apps that serve patients, and what thinks has the most potential to impact the consumer experience moving forward.

Jessica DaMassa: Hi this is Jessica DaMassa; I'm here at the Guidewell Insights Lounge at Singularity University in Exponential Medicine. I'm joined by Thomas Goetz; he's the CEO of Iodine. So Thomas, tell me a little bit about Iodine. What is that?

Thomas Goetz:Well thanks for having me. Iodine is a consumer technology company. We develop tools, for both web and mobile, for people to make better decisions about their medications; find out what's going to work for them better. Kind of like a Yelp for medicine.

Jessica DaMassa: Really. Well there you go. So what are you seeing so far in terms of consumer engagement with the technology? Are you having good uptake?

Thomas Goetz:Yeah so the whole the whole trick or riddle for us is: how can we get people to share their experience of different medications, right? Because, you know, what we know about medications is really based on randomized control trials; clinical trials which are highly artificial, highly kind of managed. And then, the drugs going to the real world and the effect of them can be quite different. So we wanted to understand what happens to real people in the real world of medicines and how do we use that data to provide more guidance for other people.

Well in order to make that happen, you need people to share. So getting, building tools and resources that people not only find useful but are willing to donate and and basically share their own experience is really the trick of the trade.

Jessica DaMassa: So we've been hearing a lot about obviously data here I mean collection of big data and the opportunity for it. From a patient engagement standpoint, can you talk a little bit about maybe some of the challenges that you guys are having getting patients to engage, to contribute their data. I know security is an issue and all those things so talk a little bit about what you're encountering.

Thomas Goetz:Yeah so it definitely is the main challenge and I think one of the things that the healthcare industry in general is not very good at understanding is who the end user of consumer technology is; the end user being the patient. But it's really difficult to get that person, that patient to really contribute, to share, to participate in these patient engagement programs that are patient portals, it’s all, honestly it's not some very well designed in terms of human experience. So we really try...

Jessica DaMassa: To make it better!

Thomas Goetz:Yeah, exactly. What, well first of all, designing it as consumer software instead of healthcare software. That was really the first insight that we had. So my co-founder is a developer from Google and we really put a lot of emphasis on things like speed; how quickly can somebody get through a process; how can you develop meaningful insights from the least amount of data. So it's really understanding what consumer technology has spent years and billions of dollars getting right and bringing that to healthcare.

Jessica DaMassa: How does your solution interact with the traditional health system? How's the update going?

Thomas Goetz:Yeah so our mobile strategy, basically, is to have people use a mobile app that, when they started medication, they use the app and they're able to check in, share their experience. But out of that data, we start to create a loop or what we generate a progress report. And those reports can be really powerful for not just the person in understanding their experience on the medication but also for the doctor.

Jessica DaMassa: Sure

Thomas Goetz:Because oftentimes the patient is largely chronic care outpatient setting so the person leaves the doctor's office with a prescription and the doctor has no sense of whether it's working or not, for months. So we basically create a real-time awareness of what's happening with that patient.

Jessica DaMassa: And what kind of feedback are you getting from providers?

Thomas Goetz:So we thought - actually it's been very positive - we thought it was going to be more suspicious; more concerned that we were in effect replicating what the doctor is supposed to be doing. But frankly, doctors are outmatched in the amount of expectations that we have around what they're doing and how closely they’re monitoring patients. And so building software that can actually automate those processes that are typically manual, that's what software is for.

Jessica DaMassa: Right. So as far as some of these other exponential technologies that we are seeing, you know, and talking about here xMed, what do you think has the most potential to impact the consumer experience moving forward?

Thomas Goetz:So the thing that I think is cool about what, I mean it's all very cool, but for many years I've talked about the future of medicine and the third feature medicine but what I think is actually changing and very promising is the ideas around artificial intelligence, machine learning and bringing, basically, some sense of predictive intelligence to help guide patient, the patient journey so to speak.

What is the best course of action for a patient? And I think that's a lot of what you see, is thinking about okay what is the layer of artificial intelligence that we can bring into care that makes for not only more informed patient but also a faster kind of movement through the trial-and-error process.

Jessica DaMassa: So what, in your opinion, what area of health care needs to be disrupted next?

Thomas Goetz:Oh…goodness. Well, all of it. Ok I'm excited about the changes that are coming to the insurance industry. I mean not what we're doing but I'm just excited about it generally. I think the insurance, you know, there's some pressure from the ACA that is moving from top-down systems but also some bottom-up innovation that I think would be really dynamic and really changed what we expect as people as consumers out of our insurer relationship.

Providers, I think providers are going to have more. They need more time there. I mean that the rate of physician burnout is exorbitant.

Jessica DaMassa: You hear a lot about that.

Thomas Goetz:Yeah. So creating tools that not only make them more efficient but also more happy and fulfilled in the care that they provide; I think that's going to be a huge. There's basically, it's aligning incentives, right? We want better care. But unless you get physicians to want to use a new tool and something that works into the workflow and benefits them in a day-to-day basis, you're not going to kind of foist the tool on them. So those are, those are kind of the tricks of disruption in health care and medicine - are unique.

Jessica DaMassa: Excellent! Thomas, thank you so much for joining and...

Thomas Goetz:Yeah, yeah it was fun.

Jessica DaMassa: We appreciate your input especially on the consumer engagement side of things and hearing how technology is really making a difference in that experience for the patient. This is Jessica Demassa reporting from the Guidewell Insights Lounge.

Kate posed questions about population health, the social needs of the senior population and the recent Greater Than Cancer Immersion Event. Here's a transcript of that interview.

Kate: Hi everyone and welcome back to the GuideWell Insights Lounge. We're here at the Oliver Wyman Health Innovation Summit. My name is Kate Warnock and I have with us right now GuideWell’s president, Dr. René Lerer. René…Welcome.

Dr. René: Thank you. It’s a pleasure to be here.

Kate: We're happy to have you here with us every day. Let's start with your first question. You're going to be talking on the summit you're going to be on a panel talking about ‘Beyond The Checklist’ and how do you really improve population health. René, what are some of the things that we really do need to address the population health so that we began to transform that experience?Dr. René: So population health, first off, is what it says: it’s understanding your population. One of the things we'll talk about tomorrow is how we identify the population that we're dealing with. Who are those patients? What are their needs? What kind of experiences have they had in the past? Not just medical experience, not just clinical experiences but experiences in dealing with the challenges of life. We want to know who they are. This is primarily in the discussion related to Medicare; so they're seniors.What have their experiences been? What's their health history then? Know who they are and then identify who we can focus on and then put together programs that really meet their needs: clinically, socially, and psychologically. All aspects of it, in a different methodology, supporting their primary care doctors, supporting the specialist, supporting the community of healthcare; surrounding them in a way that we really get to know who they're, what they need and when we can have the greatest impact.You know, it really just seemed to be a manifestation of one of the themes here; the biggest theme for the Oliver Wyman Health Innovation Summit which is the Consumer Imperative and how it’s transforming healthcare. So clearly you’re a step ahead already in addressing that consumer in such a holistic way.

Kate: René, I just came across an article, our next question, from a New York Times article that said that loneliness in the senior population is a greater indicator of early morbidity than obesity.

What is it that GuideWell is doing with its partner Wyman Healthcare that is addressing the social needs of this population?

Dr. René: So the lack of social interaction in this population is an incredible challenge for these folks. They're totally isolated. So not only are their medical problems a challenge because of their age or because of medical history that they've had; they’re on their own. They're often living alone, they’re by themselves. They don't feel that they are being cared for; that someone cares about them.So one of our goals, again, is to understand holistically who these patients are. What are their needs? How do we bring all their needs to them so that we can improve their livelihood? Not just from a clinical perspective because the reality is it's not about managing their healthcare. It's about giving them a supportive environment so that they can have some enjoyment in life which goes well beyond writing prescriptions. We’re seeing clinicians. It really has to do with their lifestyle getting out, appropriate nutrition, appropriate even drinking, opening up a refrigerator seeing some food in there. And constant interaction with people.

So that we now have dashboards with companies were working with that we follow. We know what they're (members) doing. We know if they're leaving their house. We know who they're interacting with. We will be able to tell: are they on the phone or they truly isolated; so we can target them.

Kate: You and I, in previous conversations with you René, I know that you've talked about this: it's very high-tech but also very high touch. So you're really enabling technology to come into the home in a very non-invasive way. Again to make sure that that there are doing those behaviors that you want to see and making sure that if they're not, that you're able to intercept, maybe, some negative situation.

Dr. René: So you think of technology as an introduction to interaction. Technology gives us the opportunity to interact with the member and pick the members that need it. The technology is great from a clinical perspective but the social interaction is really what the member wants.

I was hoping you could, maybe, connect for us, you know, here we are at the Summit; what would the audience here want to know about this immersion experience so that we can have this, the folks that are here at the Summit, maybe kind of join where we are with this Immersion Event; which is a six-month journey. Why don’t you tell us a little?

Dr. René: So the immersion event was it was a first of its class, first of its kind of program where we really not just had lectures about patients with cancer - this was about cancer - but saw cancer from the perspective of everyone involved. From the family member, to the patient themselves, to the doctors, to the community leaders, to groups that were just being support groups. It was really an opportunity for people to contribute and add; it was not an environment where people just lecture. So as we now move into the next environment, if you think about what's happening here with consumer engagement, consumer engagement is the ultimate for the cancer patients.

Again, if anyone feels isolated, feels alone in their journey, often it's a cancer patient. If we can take what we're learning here to further the immersion event over the next few months so that we can truly understand the experience of all the caregivers and all the patients, what we learned at the immersion event was it was almost more difficult for the caregivers as they experience the pain of their patients. If we can identify ways to communicate, interact and engage members and all of those involved in the management of cancer patients, we’ll move a long way. So hopefully, what we learn here over the next few days, we can adopt, bring some of the skill sets, bring some of the people, and emerge them into this immersion event.

Kate: Perfect! Well that's an open invitation for anyone who hears this interview. Please find out more about this event at GuideWellInnovation.com.

Dr. René Lerer, thank you so much for joining under here at the GuideWell Insights Lounge. My name is Kate Warnock. Thank you so much for watching!

Thursday, October 6, 2016

Has your healthcare company been thinking about getting its employees ‘up to date’ on the benefits social media can bring to your company? Well, the esteemed social media leader and team at Mayo Clinic have been advancing leaders in the area of ‘Healthcare Social Media’ for a while now.

Yesterday the Mayo Clinic posted a video titled ‘Social Media at Mayo.’ It presented some key considerations healthcare 'providers' wanting to leverage social media need to consider. The video was targeted to Mayo employees but it's apparently available to others. (See here and the end of this post.)

Who Started All of This?

While I’m not 100% sure, my take is that the video can be 'attributed' to a fellow named Lee Aase - someone I know was the spark that started the 'social media' a fire at the Mayo Clinic some 5, 6 or 7 years ago.

Leverage This Professional Audio!

This blog post is a transcript of the video – obviously produced by people well-versed in producing professional media. The narrator voice is classic! It's a short, but good, resource intended to attract those interested in learning how to use social digital media.

The following is a verbatim transcript. I've done my best to add punctuation based on YouTube's voice to text translation.

== Transcript Starts ==

Social media are having a revolutionary impact in society; enabling users to share information ideas, personal messages and to create communities. Some of the most popular social media platforms include Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest & Instagram - with new sites launching continuously.

Mayo Clinic’s leaders understand the power and potential of social media tools and healthcare; and also believe professionals need proper training to use them well. I’m proud to say that Mayo Clinic has been, and intends to be, among the leaders in using social media in medicine. This one is not about competitive advantage. This message is as it should be. It’s s all about the patient and how these tools can help us all serve them better and work together with the patients and their families for their health.

That’s why we have the Mayo Clinic Social Media Network, a professional social network for Mayo Clinic employees and colleagues worldwide who want to learn and share ways to use social media tools in their work. On the Mayo Clinic Social Media Network, you’ll find social media guidelines from Mayo Clinic employees as well as an explanation for each guideline. You also have access to a unique training program in the basics of social media for healthcare professionals.

Our colleagues outside of Mayo Clinic pay for this training; but for Mayo employees and students its are. Here’s how to get started:

That's ItThat's a straight translation with punctuation I think is in the ball park. Be sure to check out the links I've provided in the above transcript and get more details about social media resources at the Mayo Clinic Social Media Network site here.

Disclaimer! Why did I just Share This?

Because I know that the content the Mayo Clinic provides is generally good info for those interested in health care social media. Mayo's been a leader in using social media and digital media to make a positive contribution to health care at large for a while now.

And it's not rocket science. In many ways, the efforts Mayo makes on social media are becoming table stakes to compete in healthcare today. Even other healthcare providers and healthcare-related organizations not as well known and esteemed as the Mayo Clinic can do well like Mayo with some moderate focus and guidance; if leadership and staff alike are involved.

Want More?

For more information on how to learn about social media, digital health strategy and other healthcare data, technology and services topics, consider following me on Twitter where I share as @ShimCode. If you'd like some guidance and help with leveraging social media at your organizations, feel free to reach out to me and I can point you to some good people and resources.